Summary:From productivity to email to operating systems to mobile to hardware, David Gewirtz is no longer actively using Microsoft products. He's not a Microsoft hater. The transition just happened organically as he adopted products that better served his needs.

"If you're looking for the beating heart of the digital age - a physical location where the scope, grandeur, and geekiness of the kingdom of bits become manifest-you could do a lot worse than Lenoir, North Carolina. This rural city of 18,000 was once rife with furniture factories. Now it's the home of a Google data center."

"Get ready to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty! White House Executive Chef Cris Comerford is inviting you to join a virtual Maker Camp Field Trip to the White House Kitchen Garden on Wednesday, August 13 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

"Computer users pass around USB sticks like silicon business cards. Although we know they often carry malware infections, we depend on antivirus scans and the occasional reformatting to keep our thumbdrives from becoming the carrier for the next digital epidemic. But the security problems with USB devices run deeper than you think: Their risk isn't just in what they carry, it's built into the core of how they work.

"The Senate has forced the Australian Electoral Commission to disclose the source code of the software that counts Senate preference votes after the organisation refused to release it in response to a freedom-of-information request.

"The Universal Typeface is a constantly evolving, algorithmically produced font created by averaging hundreds of thousands of handwriting samples submitted to BIC's website. Anyone with a touchscreen can help shape the Universal Typeface by linking their phone or tablet to the website and writing directly on the touchscreen - the lettering is quickly transferred to the Universal Typeface algorithm."

"The 2014 15 Budget is officially available at budget.gov.au as the authoritative source of Budget Papers (BPs) and Portfolio Budget Statement (PBS) documents. This dataset is a collection of data sources from the 2014 15 Budget"

"Recently in the video world, we've seen an ever-heightening use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - also known as drones, quadcopters, or octocopters (depending on the number of blades!). And what with the recent invention of the "drone selfie" or "dronie," and elevation of that phenomenon into Internet stardom, we thought it would be a good time to sit you down for a little lesson on aerial videography.:

"Keys hiding in couch cushions. Wayward wallets causing panic. It's estimated that each of us will spend six months of our lives looking for things we've lost. San Diego startup XY wants to make locating lost items as easy as Googling for directions.

"Facebook buying Oculus Rift was seen by some people as a huge blow to the future of the system, but now we have some news which'll make the odd virtual reality privacy intrusion worth its while: An upcoming David Attenborough documentary is being filmed specifically for the Oculus Rift."

"Researchers have uncovered an extremely critical vulnerability in recent versions of OpenSSL, a technology that allows millions of Web sites to encrypt communications with visitors. Complicating matters further is the release of a simple exploit that can be used to steal usernames and passwords from vulnerable sites, as well as private keys that sites use to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data.